


In the Eye of the Beholder

by DinoDina



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, But like... reluctant love, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Introspection, Living Together, Love, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinoDina/pseuds/DinoDina
Summary: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but because the beholder is Jaskier, Yennefer would very much like to stick a needle into said eye.Or: Jaskier calls Yennefer beautiful and she has a crisis.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	In the Eye of the Beholder

"You're beautiful," Jaskier says, as if it's not the most terrifying thing Yennefer's ever heard, as if he has the right to even think such things.

Yennefer scoffs but doesn't stop what she's doing. Unlike Jaskier, who does nothing of import, she's busy with potion ingredients, chopping, crushing, mixing herbs and other things that make Jaskier squeak in mock disgust. She doesn't answer him, and he doesn't repeat himself. Good. Who does he think he is, the senseless little troubadour, to compliment her as if they're real lovers rather than acquaintances?

He doesn't bring it up later when they make dinner together or when they go up to the bed they share and curl up, Yennefer holding Jaskier close to her chest.

Beauty is pointless and arbitrary on its own. A bard like Jaskier wears it like armor and for the joy of turning heads; a sorceress like Yennefer is expected to use it, to choose it in an elaborate con where there is no second choice. Yennefer's beauty is her own and at the same time an unknown foreign creature—she chose it, chose every nook and cranny of her new body, but there's a universe where she remained crooked. A sorceress still, maybe, powerful and feared, but ruling without the beauty that Jaskier likes to recoil from before begging for more of her.

Jaskier's never called her beautiful before. Her eyes, yes, and her cunt, when he wasn't praising it like one would a buffet. He's not brought it up since, either, and that's the only reason she lets him into her bed. His bed. It's his Oxenfurt apartment, with wide windows and plush pillows, curious students prowling beneath the open windows to hear Jaskier compose something for the unnecessarily large collection of musical instruments that takes up the spare room.

He looks at her not unlike how he looks at the instruments. Like an interesting new puzzle—of which he also has a collection, though they're scattered throughout the quarters because he's a barely functioning disaster of a bard with hardly a brain cell to his name. Sometimes she's not sure if he's more loving around his lute or around her.

It's quite flattering, really.

Jaskier kisses her like he has the right to do so but never like he owns her. Always knowing, from the first moment when Yennefer made it clear, that Yennefer's the one in control. She can snap him in half without breaking a sweat—but maybe not without breaking her heart—whenever she pleases. She never pleases; only sometimes considers it, and Jaskier works harder to make her stay, bends to her wishes, stretching himself to the limit.

Yennefer sees his mouth move in the morning and knows the words before they come.

"You're beautiful."

She cuts the words off with a kiss that's greedy and harder than it should be. She stakes her claim, for if Jaskier cannot tell her such things, he has no right to leave her, and since he is not, obviously, hers forever, he has no right to the tender moments lovers share and the sweet nothings they shower upon each other.

Later, when Jaskier's returned from his classes and Yennefer's kicked out her last client, Jaskier sits with his lute by the window and idly strums, his eyes closed, as the wind ruffles his hair and student chatter wafts up to the rooms. He's nonchalant in the same way that Yennefer never reveals the power she truly holds until she must, only coyly hinting at it—every movement is rehearsed, a show to pander his ego as well as a ploy to seduce her.

She makes a face to clarify that his wiles won't work on her—because it's too late—but waits for the songs to end. Jaskier looks at her and his expression doesn't change. She's always yearned to be important to someone; when Jaskier gazes at her with the same reverence he holds for his lute, she can pretend she's found it.

Jaskier's not attractive, not _really_ , and he spends his time either playing nonsense or in her bed—not counting the endless chatter—and he has neither common sense nor a sense of style, and his self-preservation instinct is as non-existent as his shame. He's a stupid little man smarter only than her traitorous heart. When he falls in love, it's easy, simple: he's a bard, it's what they do. The romance, the fleeting companionship, the tearful farewell and famous song that comes after he climbs out a window. Yennefer's not like that. She can't be, she doesn't want to be, and sex is all well and good—better when she can yank on her partners' heartstrings and reduce them to nothing—but what she shares with Jaskier is more and it's _terrifying_.

Jaskier sleeps the way he does everything else: inconveniently. He doesn't snore like other men do, but he wheezes and mumbles and _talks_ endlessly, holding conversations with phantoms and ghosts, asking for his teeth back from malevolent fae, bargaining for new doublets with stingy merchants, and telling stories about an eagle that cannot fly but needs to provide for his family. He whispers into her ear in the middle of the night and she, expecting intruders, wakes with a spell on her lips only to find a fool snuggled into her shoulder as if for protection.

She can kill him more soundly than any monster he can imagine in the dreams that cloud his eyes. She doesn't, and _she's_ the fool in that moment; she shushes Jaskier gently, because he will have no recollection of this moment, and laughs as he mumbles about starfish and spiders before returning to sleep.

He is not beautiful in the slightest, sleep-rumbled hair half-standing and half-plastered to the side of his face, shirt falling off one shoulder and stretching awkwardly over his neck as it exposes his stupid chest hair. He squints up at her as he wakes, eyes open but unseeing, and there's a single moment when he's silent, when his nighttime ramblings are a memory and his daytime chatter is too complex to form.

She likes him best like this, this soft, imperfect form that is too tired to perform and too sleep-addled to charm her—not the tender Jaskier of the night, spending evenings serenading her, bending over books and grading papers, relaxed but animated. That Jaskier is conscious in his words and movements, he dares to look at Yennefer and call her beautiful as if it is a natural attribute of her body rather than a consequence of coercion and pain.

"Darling," Jaskier whispers later as he stands behind her, leaning his chin onto her shoulder and deliberately getting in the way when Yennefer tries to put on her earrings for the day.

"The sapphire." He pouts when she attempts to put on the gold. She would sneer but he kisses her cheek and smiles as he does it, so the kiss turns sloppy, and she turns in his arms for a proper kiss, challenging Jaskier in spirit if not in action—justifying it all to herself, _still_ , even after so many months, because the attention is too ideal to be true.

It hurts, sometimes, to watch Jaskier interact with his students and the other professors, because for all that Yennefer is immensely powerful and has studied enough to go along with that, she is not truly one of them. No matter how, when they retire after dinner, Jaskier pokes fun at his peers' arguments and conclusions, implores Yennefer to share her own thoughts, acts as if it's just the two of them against the rest of the world—Yennefer doesn't truly belong here, for all that Jaskier respects her as a conversation partner and dotes on her as a lover.

He's too scared of her to leave, Yennefer wants to think for a moment, but that would imply that Jaskier has a lick of sense somewhere beneath his garish doublets and ridiculous bonnets. He will want to leave sometime, is the problem, if not now, for he is a bird at heart—not a songbird, whose head is filled with songs and survival, but a bird of prey. An eagle, maybe, confident in its power and skill, or perhaps a hawk or falcon, graceful in its danger and brighter in its color. Or perhaps he's some sort of cat, instead, for Jaskier loves to bask and refuses to compromise, hissing and spitting at inconveniences and rubbing against her leg for attention when it pleases him. That's apt. Jaskier loves her legs. Not a housecat, though: Jaskier stalks his prey, searches out danger and excitement and never quite settles down, roaming and exploring, too excitable for a lion or tiger. Maybe some sort of mountain cat, the kind that jumps when startled and hides from rain while pretending to be sophisticated.

She can turn him into such a beast if she wants to. Even on all fours, he'd still be Jaskier at his core. He'd probably bring her dead mice as courting gifts instead of rare alchemical books, bright earrings, and romantic songs, but he would arch up into her touch all the same.

"Darling," Jaskier says when he gets into her arms; his voice is sometimes cheeky, sometimes teasing, sometimes challenging, but most often rough and bare with emotion as Yennefer can only hope to feel safe enough to echo.

He doesn't try to call her beautiful again in the morning, though two days have passed since the first time—so perhaps he has _some_ sense—but his voice is sweet and his eyes are soft, and he's looking at Yennefer the way he looked at a new lute on exhibition several weeks ago, the same way he always looks at her—underneath the teasing and passion—and the way he looked at her when he called her beautiful.

Only Jaskier is allowed to call her "Darling."

He's earned it, with his odd balance of courtship and insolence, the way he looks at her less with genuine terror and more with recognition and respect of her power.

He doesn't call her beautiful again, but maybe he should.

Yennefer would respond this time, would allow him the liberty and indignity of loving her in this way.

She would relish it.

**Author's Note:**

> The working title was "Fucking Yennskier?" so there's that. The actual question, however is: am I projecting onto Jaskier to show my full love of Yennefer, or am I projecting onto Yennefer to show my annoyance and begrudging love of Jaskier?
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
